Could gifted brain speed tire us out?

It’s observed that many gifted people deal with fatigue and burnout. Some of this could be genetic and epigenetic. Some could be simply a consequence of gifted people’s preferred manners of living. Here are some gifted habits that could contribute to endocrine burnout over time:

Learning in our free time

In contrast to many people who like to relax on their days off, we like to LEARN in our free time.

I feel like I haven’t fully enjoyed a weekend or time off if I haven’t learned something I chose to learn during that time. My main complaint with work is not that I have to accomplish difficult things, but that it ties up my time and prevents me from pursing learning of my own choosing.

In college, I used to finish my schoolwork quickly so that I could read academic books of my own choosing, to pursue this never-ending process of exhausting a subject, becoming interested in something new from that pursuit, then exhausting the new subject, and so on.

Having a compulsion to do this on top of the very high levels of work demanded of American workers can be tiring. Yet not doing it, and not pursuing learning of our own choosing, is also tiring.

Making work harder than it has to be

Gifted people tend to make jobs harder than they have to be by looking for how to fix problems or perform their best. They tend to want frequent innovation and challenges and are not content to simply learn how to do their jobs and relax. They want to move forward and do more.

When gifted, it can feel like giving up on oneself simply to do a good enough job or to perform on an average level. When it is clear that one could perform better, it feels dishonest and fatiguing to prevent that from happening, but then following that urge is also tiring.

Lack of peers

Another tiring thing is the LACK OF PEERS, so we can’t relax by just doing as much as others around us. Seemingly in order to succeed at our potential, we would need to take over any company we enter, or that’s how it feels.

Trying to live at odds with those around us and out-perform them can be tiring, since you are constantly pushing and making yourself more different, yet slacking and staying back at their pace can also be tiring.

All in all, it can be exhausting having a brain with these demands.

In my own experience, there seems to be no easy way to avoid fatigue. I get energized by doing exactly the gifted habits that can contribute to fatigue and illness and poor immune function. Sometimes when I really enjoy myself, I seem to get more endorphins and enjoyment, but then I might get sick a day or two later, perhaps from sustained stress. It seems hard for us to get the bliss chemicals we need without also getting stress chemicals.